Wow, been a stretch since I last posted. Lots of personal stuff has happened since summer, some bad, some good... but none the less it took me away from my camera for a while.

I havent shot hardly anything since summer time, which is a bummer, so I'd thought I'd pull out an old one for you guys.

Lots of thanks to everyone who emailed or called when I fell off the map there for a bit... I appreciate the support while I tried to put life back together again! I owe apologies to a couple people too, you know who you are.

This is one from this past summer on one of my many evenings shooting in Glacier Park. I was never happy with the original image I processed from this evening, so I went with this one taken a few minutes later and took a different route with it as far as color processing. I really like the way this one turned out. I also tried to bring out the foreground flowers a bit by dodging them, they were just starting to bloom, so they weren't as thick and full as I would have liked.

Anyways, with all the talk lately all over the internet about grads vs. exposure blending vs. hdr, I'll just put in my personal preference... this image is a perfect example. I used a 2 stop soft edge grad to control the sky AND blended 2 exposures... one for the overall exposure and one for painting in shadow detail. I probably could have gotten away with a lot of Fill Light in ACR, or double processed the single RAW file... but I find this way really helps control noise and tends to maintain a little more natural look to the shadows. A lot of guys will swear by hdr, some will use only blending, and some dudes will use grads only and never blend exposures. I'm the kind of guy who doesn't get all uptight about blending and will use whatever tools and technology available to me to make the images I like... these techniques are awesome and are bringing a whole new feel to photography. I hope people try to be open minded and change with the times... if not you may find yourself left behind ;) Don't want to start a debate, just giving my opinion because it's been asked a few times.

Sorry, just wanted to post that rant for the people who email me asking about my techniques for handling dynamic range and for the guys who bash other people for how they make their images. You make the images you wanna make, I'll make the ones I wanna make... we'll all be happy that way.

A reprocessed version of one from last summer. Out of the 20 or so times I've tried shooting Saint Mary Lake in Glacier Park, this is about the best light I've got. Nothing too epic, but I did like that the glacial silt in the water showed up well despite the overall drab lighting.

Still posting some of my second string stuff from the past year. Hope you don't mind.

This was from my 4 week trip to the Northern Rockies this past fall. We actually got a great sunset on this particular evening but the colors went crazy in this series of shots from the intense colors in the sky reflecting onto the landscape. I've tried to process this in color 4 times over the past few months but haven't ever been happy with it color-wise, so I tried this b&w version. I almost never process b&w's, I just really love color, so I'm a little out of practice with processing these mono shots... I really like the way it turned out though, it may inspire me to process some more b&w stuff in the next few days.

Anyways, thanks for checking it out. If you're interested, please check out the workshop dates on my website, spots are starting to fill up! www.dyarphotography.com

I just realized I had never got around to posting this one. This is from a fabulous sunrise we (Maryanne, Dene, Rachel, and I) got over the sea stack laden stretch of coast in Bandon, Oregon.

The wave you see pictured here was one of the only good fg waves I got that morning, it streaked perfectly... mimicking the clouds that fanned out into the sky. It did pummel me though. I was standing on top of a log trying to keep my boots dry as my other pair was soaked from the previous evening. I managed to fire off this one lucky frame before the wave hit and sent the big log rolling backwards with me on top of it like you see in the hillbilly olympics... something like this www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoLSt3DomEM

Anyways, I thought this turned out pretty good. I just really love the way all the lines fan out from the foreground to the sky and the contrasting warm and cool tones. Hope you guys like it. I really need to do more coastal work.

As always, thanks for all the support everyone. If you'd like to see more images that haven't been posted to flickr, or for workshops, calendars, prints, or licensing please take a look at my new site www.dyarphotography.com